Bittersweet Summer
by Lingering Lilies
Summary: The summer Brittany turns sixteen, she is working as a lifeguard at the community pool and meets Sam. AU, lifeguard!Brittany


A/U: This is NOT a Brittana fic and you don't have to read. Please be nice, I just messed up my car so I'm a lil' sensitive. I wrote this in college six years ago and found it today. I think it fits the characters pretty darn well, so I thought I'd let you read.

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><p>The summer I was sixteen was the second summer I worked at Lima Community Pool. I was the youngest lifeguard on staff, the only natural blonde, and the only person there who didn't go to McKinley High. I was also the only girl. Well, there were a few others, but they sat at the register, talking on their cell phones, picking at chipped nail polish and being careful not to scuff their new sandals on the rough pool deck. They slouched in the oversized white plastic chairs the management placed around the pool deck for the guests. The girls weren't bimbos, but I didn't see why they wouldn't deal with a little water and a little sweat in exchange for an extra five bucks an hour. I certainly thought it was worth it.<p>

The first thing I heard about Sam was that he was in the Glee Club at McKinley High. At work I heard the guys joke with him about being a fag. Sam laughed along with them and jokingly offered to wrestle them on the lawn outside to settle the debate once and for all. He was the kind of boy who could put on a nice shirt and meet your parents, and then smoke a joint with you in the treehouse in your backyard after they left. Not that I'd know anything about that.

Sam had just started working at Lima Community Pool, but everyone else knew him from school. He was instantly one of the guys, something I struggled to do. Well, I didn't really want to be one of the guys, but I wanted to joke and laugh with them, even if I was different. While Sam got the gay jokes, I got nicknamed Pretty in Pink. They called me that because I was the "poor girl" at the rich school who needed to work as a lifeguard with the public school kids because her mommy and daddy wouldn't buy her a car for her sixteenth birthday. In reality, my family was no better off than their families. Had my family not been paying my tuition, I might have gotten a car. But it didn't really matter. I liked working there. I liked the company of the boys who were in touch with a normal high school world full of football games and cheerleaders and prom queens and senior pranks and a million other things I would never experience. But whenever I got to thinking how it would be nice to live in that normal high school world, I felt guilty. My school was pretty nice. So I never talked about it.

Sam was not the first to call me Blondie, my other nickname. But he was the first to say it with a smile, as if he knew what he was doing, getting under my skin as a way to break the ice.

"Hey there, blondie," he said with a smile as I walked in to work. It was kind of a jerk move, since we hadn't met yet, but somehow he got away with it. Standing behind the counter, I could see only his head, shoulders and most of his biceps. His biceps…

"Hey there, muscle man." That sounded stupid, but I felt the need to return his commentary on my appearance with one of my own. But I wish I could have thought of something funnier, about a weightlifter or wrestler or something. But I didn't know any of those.

He actually chuckled and reached his hand out to me for a high five. I looked at him slightly confused and embarrassed before half-heartedly slapping his hand.

"You must be Brittany," he said and jerked his head towards the bulletin board. All our pictures smiled cheerfully above our names for the patrons of the pool. This was so they could reference our pictures and know who exactly to complain about when they didn't feel a lifeguard was polite enough or professional enough or was overheard swearing.

"Your powers of observation astound me…" I scanned the bulletin board for a picture of the new boy, but it wasn't up yet. "And you are?"

"Sam. New guy."

"Really?" I asked with a smile. "I couldn't tell."

He smiled and I melted a little bit. He was smooth, and we both knew it.

* * *

><p>"So I hear you dance, Brittany."<p>

Sam tilted his head away from the sun towards me before letting it roll back to its original position. We were sitting in the oversized chairs out in the sun on our break, slouching with our heads resting on the back of the chairs. We had our sunglasses on and our eyes closed. He had his Guard shirt off, and I had mine doubled over my boobs so my stomach would tan. There were no explicit rules against sunbathing on our breaks, but had our supervisor Robert walked on deck from the office, we would have sat up and covered ourselves.

"Oh, yeah… sometimes. I do plays at the community center. I started when I was a kid. Now I'm Bethany's – the director's - assistant. She's having a baby and she wants someone to do all the heavy lifting and spray painting around the theater. I like it. The kids are fun. I get to make up all the dances and I still get to be in the shows. There are a couple people our age, too."

"Heavy lifting, huh? That's where you got those guns."

I laughed and punched him in his bicep. He feigned injury. I settled back in my chair, refocusing on the rays working on my skin and the blinding light that managed to seep through my sunglasses and eyelids, overwhelming me with orange-red light.

A few weeks later Sam and I were stuck closing the pool together. I normally hated the task, but not tonight. The sun had set but we could still see what we were doing in the glow of the underwater pool lights. I yanked the worn blue pool cover off the roller while Sam steadied it so it wouldn't fall into the diving pool in one catastrophic splash. If the roller fell in we would both be suspended for several weeks because it was so heavy, they had to hire a crane to get it out when that happened last summer. It took all my strength to pull the cover hard enough for it to roll. Once it began rolling, I had to keep pulling hard or it would stop.

"Use those guns, Brittany," Sam called from the other side of the diving pool.

I grunted and focused all my energy on pulling the cover. When I had pulled the cover the entire length of the pool, Sam walked to the other end to help me adjust it.

"So are there any roles for me?" he asked.

"What?" I asked, genuinely confused.

"In your show. At the community center."

I was surprised. I guess I shouldn't have been. I knew he liked performing. "Well, um… actually, yeah! We need another guy. As long as you don't mind hanging out with a bunch of twelve-year-olds. And me."

He bit down a grin. "Works for me." We got the cover in place, and he smiled at me and said, "As long as I don't have to kiss you or anything weird."

I laughed and tried to punch him in the arm. He caught my hand and wrapped it around my torso, grabbing my other arm, holding me in place like a straightjacket. I wrestled back, stepping on his toes, trying to pull myself out of his hold, smiling all the while. We struggled, wobbling side to side and I let out a shriek as I felt us falling. With a loud _whoosh _we hit the cover. It puckered and folded around us as we were soaked from head to toe. The light from the pool erupted onto the dark pool deck. We were illuminated as Sam finally let go of me. As I churned my legs to untangle them from him and the monstrous blue cover, I used a free arm to push his head back underwater. He pulled me under with him and we came up, sputtering and laughing.

He hoisted himself up onto the deck while I was still pushing my hair out of my eyes. The water gushed from his t-shirt and shorts onto the dry deck. I dipped myself back underwater to fix my hair, and when I came up and opened my eyes, Sam was hovering over me on the deck, his hand extended to help me out. I looked at him with suspicion. He would let go of my hand and let me fall back in, I just knew it. I took his hand anyway, figuring I'd beat him to it and pull him back in. But his heels dug into the edge of the pool and he stood his ground.

As I sloshed back up onto the deck, I made a big puddle next to the one he had just created. We took our shoes off and wrung as much water out of our clothes as we could without taking them off. We looked at the dismantled pool covers and burst out laughing again. Then it got quiet, aside from our breathing.

"Catch me," I breathed.

"What?" he asked, giving me a funny frown.

"Catch me!" I shouted.

And with that I tore off, out of the pool area, across the lawn, through the parking lot and across the street to the park. He wasn't far behind me. I collapsed on a bench and he threw himself into the spot right next to me, wrapping his arm around my waist, feeling the night air chill the wet fabric of my t-shirt.

"Got you," he said with a triumphant, smug smile.

* * *

><p>Bethany had an unusually high-pitched voice for a thirty-year-old woman. It was as if her vocal cords had stopped growing at age five, but her volume capacity had not.<p>

"Welcome to camp, everyone!" she screeched, holding her little arms out towards the uncomfortable group of preteens sitting before her.

Sam grinned at me and slipped his hand into mine. It startled me so much, all I could think about was the millions of tiny spots on my palm he could feel. My fingers were squeezed tight between his, almost choking, but I couldn't pull my hand away. As I began to wonder if my palm was too sweaty, I heard Bethany cheer "Let's sing!" as she waddled across the stage to the piano.

Later that night Sam and I were laying on our backs in the treehouse my dad built, my head on Sam's stomach, one of his arms behind his head. We could hear crickets loudly chirping and see the occasional firefly.

"So how do you feel about kissing Toby?" Sam asked as he exhaled smoke and passed me the joint.

I erupted into a fit of laughter. "Why would I kiss Toby?" I asked, as if that were the strangest question I had ever heard.

"Isn't that part of this stupid show?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it in this stupid show." I took a drag and paused before asking, "What about Chloe?"

He shrugged, still holding the joint a few inches from his face. "Chloe's cool… but I kinda have a thing for blondes."

I hummed. "Guess I should dye my hair so you won't fall for me."

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><p>After rehearsal every night Sam and I went for ice cream, even when it was a little chilly. We would sit in the empty park by the pool. Sometimes he'd bring a bottle of peach schnapps he found in his basement and we'd get tipsy and do impressions of our coworkers and cast-mates and celebrities. He'd try to act out scenes from the show, but he couldn't act, even when he was sober. Bethany didn't care that he couldn't act, he was the only one old enough to pull off the part. I didn't care that he couldn't act either, because he could make me laugh until my stomach felt it was about to burst. All of me felt like it was about to burst.<p>

On the day I finally bought my car, I pulled up in front of his house right after it got dark. It was a pickup truck, and I secretly couldn't wait to see how the kids at school reacted to me pulling into the circular driveway in a vehicle only driven by the maintenance crew. I liked being different. Sam ran out the front door and jumped over the edge of the truck bed and landed with a loud metallic thud. I hit the gas and heard him slide towards the back with a "Whooo hoooo!"

When I reached the stop sign at the end of the block, I opened the window in the back of the cabin and grinned, "when are _you _gonna get one of these things?"

"As soon as I get a license," he said, crawling toward the window and perching his head on the windowsill.

I looked at him for a second. He was so handsome. His eyes were really clear and bright and his lips were such a pretty pink. And his hair looked like the sun had reached down and kissed it. I stared for a minute before I remembered I was at a stop sign. I startled and hit the gas again, hard. I heard him hoot as he slid backwards again.

I drove to where the main community road met the open space. It was a dead end that no one ever drove to because there were no houses. During the day, hikers and dog owners would walk past on their way into the hills, but certainly not after dark. I hopped out of the cabin and swung myself up into the truck bed. I fell in with a clumsy thud, lying on my side next to him.

"Hey." I didn't know why I was whispering.

"Hey." He was whispering too.

And then we were silent. We lay side by side in the bed of the truck, the sound of the crickets echoing off the metal. I faintly heard a coyote call. There was no other noise, except the occasional car in the distance. I felt Sam slowly reach for my hand. One by one, his fingers slipped between mine, fitting snugly as if it would take a great deal of effort to separate them. My eyes widened and I could feel every place in my body and where it met the truck bed. I hesitantly rolled towards him and put my hand on his chest. He looked at me, a look of vulnerability, lust, and fear. It broke my heart and I couldn't bear to look at it. So I closed my eyes, leaned forward and kissed him. From that single kiss sprung hundreds of kisses, each more frantic and hungry than the next. A panicked desperation rose as we fumbled with buttons and ties and zippers. Our limbs made tinny thuds on the truck bed. We couldn't look each other in the eyes as it was happening. We were scared. And it really, really hurt.

When it was over I drove him back to his house in silence. He mumbled a _thank you _as he closed the door and didn't look back as he walked up to his door. I drove home and pulled up to my driveway and lay across the bench in the cabin and cried myself to sleep.

After that night we didn't talk much. We made efforts to never be on the same shift at work. I saw him at rehearsal. I don't know who drove him there or who drove him home. I heard from other girls in the cast that he was dating Chloe, and I tried to ignore them, but it was hard. Chloe was nothing like me. Chloe didn't dance and she didn't smile very much. She didn't have strong arms and she couldn't make Sam laugh like I could. But I suppose none of that mattered.

* * *

><p>As I was closing the pool on the last night of summer, I got a call from Bethany.<p>

"Nathan's here!" she screeched.

I had heard she had gone into labor a week after our show closed, but I hadn't heard anything since. Bethany insisted I come over, so I hastily pulled the covers on the pool, hopped in my pickup and drove the short mile to Bethany's. She was waiting outside for me, with a little bundle of blankets in her arms. It could have been a warm loaf of bread, for all I could tell. Whatever it was, it was tiny and sending up a shrill wail. She walked across the lawn and hugged me with one arm, and I pushed my hips back as to not squish the baby. The tail on my truck was down and we went and sat on it in the warm dusk of August. She handed me the bundle and his wails suddenly stopped. His eyes opened and he looked up at me, his mouth slightly open.

"This is Nathan. Nathan, meet Brittany."

"Nathan like Nathan Detroit?" I asked, amused that she actually named her son after a character from _Guys and Dolls._

"Yup. I was rehearsing the show when I found out he was coming. I never got tired of hearing the name during rehearsal. So this is Nathan."

I stared down at the tiny bundle in my arms, incredulous that two people could actually create something so warm and precious and fragile. So _incredibly _fragile. Fragile like I felt sometimes.

And I began to cry. Bethany took my hand and squeezed it. I sat there, holding baby Nathan, crying until I could hear the coyotes in the hills and all the lights in the houses around us had been turned on.


End file.
